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Friday, April 15, 2011

Weekly Project 4/10-4/16: DIY Laundry Line

This week, I'm going to brag about how we save (a lot of) money each year by line drying our laundry!

This is my list of clothesline benefits:

1. Cost Savings in electricity over using the dryer

2. Energy Savings in electricity over using the dryer

3. Significantly less work at removing stains (the sun is a natural bleach)

4. Laundry off the line smells so fresh!

5. The sight of a fully loaded clothesline makes me smile

And the benefits are doubled by the fact that we cloth diaper and use the laundry more than the average disposable diapering family. There really isn't a comparison to a clothesline full of fresh, clean diapers!

I'm sure I'll be posting a cloth diaper clothesline photo for wordless Wednesday as soon as baby is born and we have laundry up!

When we moved here, we were lucky enough to have laundry posts already installed in the backyard. However, my husband has made and installed laundry posts in the past. He's a DIY carpentry guru and I couldn't tell you exactly how he made the posts, but... I watched him do it and it's almost identical to this tutorial I found by Krista on her blog: Life, In A Nutshell

The only big difference I found was that we cemented the post, which made the project run about $25 total.

It never fails, I have to replace the clothesline each year, regardless of the "quality" of the line we buy. So instead of buying vinyl coated wire and the hardware and spending 10 minutes installing it, we get 200ft of 1/4" All Purpose Clothesline from Lowes.

It runs about $18-$20 each year. Yes, it sags a bit, but the great thing about a simply knotted clothesline is that it's easy to unknot and tighten without using any tools. I run a sudsy washcloth down the line to clean it once a week, which gets rid of collected dust and dirt.

And clothespins are cheap as well. This year I snagged a 100 ct package of wooden spring pins at Walmart for only $2. I call it a yearly expense because we always seem to lose or break a fair amount of pins.

I honestly have started believing that birds or squirrels are stealing them. I'm really curious as to what they use them for.

So for an initial cost of $25 and a yearly maintenance cost of $20-$22, I save energy and money in electricity!